All posts filed under: Immigration

We arrived in Vientiane August 1968. I was 5 years old. For 6 weeks, we stayed at the Lanxang Hotel, while our house on Rue Tha Deua was being prepared for us to live in. During that time, my Dad started his job at the British Embassy, where he was the commercial attaché. My brother and I attended the International School, led by John and Valerie McLean (who currently live near us in Manchester). I missed my grandmother terribly and I struggled in the heat, but I had a lovely, eclectic group of friends from Germany, Korea, the U.S., UK, Thailand, and of course, Laos. I remember my Lao friend Boun, with his crazy hyperactivity, exuberance, and affectionate madness. There was also a beautiful Thai girl to protect me when Boun was going full swing. The war was never far away. Mum and Dad trained us and drilled us on hitting the deck if the car came under fire enroute to Luang Prabang. Sometimes, the Royal Lao Army troops guarded our school gates. Etched permanently …

This piece was also published on Reappropriate and Angry Asian Man. Last week, war veterans, mothers, fathers, family, friends, and children held signs of pleas to stop deportations of their loved ones. Organized by family members of those detained, and supported by a coalition of API advocacy organizations, people lined the streets of Minneapolis outside Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office to demand justice after almost a dozen Cambodian Minnesotans were detained for deportation. This isn’t solely in the Cambodian community. Just last year, the story of Lao American DJ Teace aka Thisaphone Sothiphakhak was in the Minneapolis City Pages. “That’s the most frustrating feeling. I went through the court system, and literally something 18 years ago came back and made me feel like I was less than human.” History of deportations: SEARAC reported in 2015 that since 1998, about 16,000 Southeast Asian Americans from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos have been given deportation orders, the majority on the basis of past criminal convictions where time has already been served. These numbers lead us to systemic double punishment …